Please click on the link and vote thumbs down in this poll.This idiotic editorial is pitching redistricting so republicans don't have an advantage!

What we think: Give voters a choice
Organizers of last week's "Tea Party" protests billed them as a bid for participants to "take back" their country. Floridians have another, more practical opportunity to take back their state -- one that doesn't involve tea bags. This one is a statewide campaign to restore some integrity to the now-corrupt system of drawing legislative and congressional districts.

Florida lawmakers go through the redistricting process every 10 years, supposedly to adjust the boundary lines to population changes revealed by the census. But the party in control of the Legislature seizes the chance to design districts that serve only to protect its majority.

Wielding elaborate databases on voter behavior and sophisticated computers, the party in charge creates as many districts as possible with a majority of voters inclined to support its candidates. They corral likely opponents into as few districts as possible. In a way, lawmakers wind up choosing their voters, instead of letting voters choose them. Because this process places partisan politics above all else, it often leads to freakishly shaped districts that divide communities with common interests.

The vote as of 11:17 EST 4/21/2009
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Thumbs up (48 responses) 36.4%
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132 total responses (Results not scientific)

I think I'm missing something here. This editorial seems to be stating that the way the system works now is completely corrupt. Which to me sounds true. It doesn't matter who is in power. When the people holding it can change the rules to keep themselves in power, then the system is busted.

How are you interpretting it to read that by allowing the citizens of Florida to decide how the districts are drawn, will be giving Democrats complete power? I gave this one a thumbs up.

megimoo

04-21-2009, 11:49 AM

I think I'm missing something here. This editorial seems to be stating that the way the system works now is completely corrupt. Which to me sounds true. It doesn't matter who is in power. When the people holding it can change the rules to keep themselves in power, then the system is busted.

How are you interpretting it to read that by allowing the citizens of Florida to decide how the districts are drawn, will be giving Democrats complete power? I gave this one a thumbs up.It's your vote.Vote as you choose .

djones520

04-21-2009, 12:28 PM

So your cool with gaming the system as long as it keeps the people you like in power?

linda22003

04-21-2009, 12:30 PM

Florida lawmakers go through the redistricting process every 10 years, supposedly to adjust the boundary lines to population changes revealed by the census. But the party in control of the Legislature seizes the chance to design districts that serve only to protect its majority.

Uhh, it happens in every state every ten years, based on the results of the census. Of course lawmakers design districts to suit them. Republicans do it, and Democrats will now have a stunning chance to do it.

megimoo

04-21-2009, 12:45 PM

So your cool with gaming the system as long as it keeps the people you like in power?Naw, I am tired the whining Liberals getting everything and I am playing at their game.Now if I were to employ an organisation like ACORN and falsify the ballots you would be justified in your accusation !

FlaGator

04-21-2009, 02:56 PM

I live in Corrine Brown's district (Florida Congressional District 3). I call it her district because it was constructed in such a manner that she would always win re-election.If you view a map her district in some places it is only as wide as the interstate highway that takes is from one predominately liberal black district to another. This is because a congressional district must be continous. This type of jurymanding has be a reality in Florida for 20 or 30 years.

This has been going on for a very long time. What FlaGator calls "jurymandering" is actually "Gerrymandering", because it was practiced egregiously for the first time in the early 19th century by Elbridge Gerry. He drew a district in Massachusetts that was so self-serving, a newspaper cartoon combined him with a salamander and created the "Gerry-mander", and the term has stuck to this day.

Another egregious example is the North Carolina 12th. When it was first created, the joke was that you could kill most of the voters in the district if you left your car doors open driving down I 85. :p

http://www.dradamfisher.org/images/12th_district.jpg

AHeneen

04-21-2009, 05:22 PM

Now I can't find any information on the legislature's composition before 2006, but if governor is any indication, FL has only had FOUR Republican governors since 1876!!! We've had 2 since 2000 (so this accounts for the most recent redistricting), but the only others served from 1988-1990 & 1967-1970. Neither or the latter governors were in office when census data was released for the purpose of redistricting.

Goldwater

04-22-2009, 03:38 PM

So your cool with gaming the system as long as it keeps the people you like in power?

Is that not the story of everyone?

noonwitch

04-23-2009, 08:40 AM

Uhh, it happens in every state every ten years, based on the results of the census. Of course lawmakers design districts to suit them. Republicans do it, and Democrats will now have a stunning chance to do it.

The republicans were in charge of doing it in Michigan a few years back. They put southern Macomb County, which is mostly democrat, in the same district as southern Oakland County (Sander Levin's district), and created a new district for northern Macomb County, so Candace Miller could get a seat in the House. Previously, Macomb County was one district and it was Bonior's district.

That's not the most confusing change, though. My cousin in Allen Park was in Dingell's district, now he's in Conyers'. I think they lumped Ann Arbor in with the downriver Detroit, except for a couple of burbs closer to the city of Detroit. Conyers always had the west side of Detroit, Kwame's Mommy has the east side. My cousin, who is a classic swing voter, hates Conyers and likes Dingell. He said that also, as Conyers really doesn't get many votes from his area, he doesn't come down and visit, like Dingell always did.

I don't think it's going to change, depending on who the next governor is and which party controls the legislature. Right now, the legislature is split, and the governor is a dem.